Configuration of ad hoc multimodal logistic networks: approach and technological framework
Alexander A. Smirnov, Tatiana Victorovna Levashova, Nikolay Germanovich Shilov · International Journal of Mass Customisation · 2012
One of the key issues in MC is ad hoc logistics for delivering personalised products and components on the just-in-time (JIT) or just-before-time (JBT) basis. The main idea of the proposed approach is to represent the ad hoc multimodal logistics network members by sets of services provided by them. This enables replacing the configuration of the logistics network with that of distributed services. For the purpose of interoperability the services use the common notation described by an application ontology. Depending on the problem considered, the relevant part of the application ontology is selected forming the abstract context that, in turn, is filled with values resulting in the operational context. The operational context represents the constraint satisfaction problem that is used during self-configuration of web-services for problem solving. The application of the context management technology significantly reduces the search space and thus makes it possible to provide for JIT and JBT solutions.